Judicious Asininity

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Thu Aug 31, 2006

Californian Democrats are the anti-Patriots

They celebrate everything except American values

Braden Files has the tale of the latest outrage:

In each of the 4 years that I have been a member of the state Assembly, we have had many "celebrations" on the Assembly floor. These celebrations" are orchestrated by the Democrats who control the House and often involve singing and dancing. Every one of my 4 years have seen substantial celebrations of Cinco de Mayo (which Commemorates the Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla ), St. Patrick's Day (for the patron Saint of Ireland), and Chinese New Year's Day, among others. But never once have we celebrated America's Independence Day, the 4th of July.

So, this year, Republican Assemblyman Jay LaSuer of San Diego arranged for Vietnam war hero Admiral Jeremiah Denton to come to California to be a part of a 4th of July ceremony. As you may know, Admiral Denton was a Navy pilot in Vietnam who was shot down and spent 8 years in a Vietnamese prison. In 1966 while in prison, he was interviewed by North Vietnamese television in Hanoi after torture to get him to "respond properly." During this interview he blinked his eyes in Morse code to spell out the word "torture." He was asked about his support for the war in Vietnam to which he replied "I don't know what is happening now in Vietnam, because the only news sources I have are Vietnamese. But whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it, I support it, and I will support it as long as I live." Four of his 8 years in prison were spent in solitary confinement. He later wrote the book "When Hell was in Session" chronicling his experience in Vietnam.

When he stepped off the plane after being released from prison in 1973, he said "We are honored to have had the opportunity to serve our country in difficult circumstances. We are profoundly grateful to our Commander-in-Chief for this day. God bless America." He was later elected to the U.S. Senate from his home state of Alabama, becoming the first retired Admiral ever elected to that body. I could go on and on about his accomplishments. Suffice it to say, Jeremiah Denton is unquestionably an American hero.

The Democrat leadership refused to allow him on the Assembly floor, and there was no 4th of July celebration. A memo from the Democrat speaker's office said "problems have arisen both with regards to the spirit, content, and participation of various individuals with regard to the ceremony."

Gotta love those Dems huh? FDR, Truman and JFK must be rolling in their graves.

Tue Aug 29, 2006

Free Software Reviews

IE 7 vs Firefox, Gmail vs Yahoo Mail

I've used Yahoo mail for years. When Gmail (beta) came out I signed on. The impact of Gmail was immense. Yahoo amd MSN were forced to dramatically increase email storage. That solved the problem of having to go through your email every few months and ruthlessly purge stuff. But Gmail had another advantage. It received mail without you having to do anything. Its secret was a technology called AJAX that lets browser based applications interact with the server discretely, rather than a page at a time.

Mozilla and Opera introduced the concept of tabbed browsers. As I look up at my tab bar I see 12 active tabs. That's a lot easier to manage and switch between than individual windows, the Internet Explorer alternative. Open Gmail in one tab and let it sit there doing its thing. Want to check for incoming email? Click the tab with Gmail icon and you're done. With Yahoo, you'd have to click another button and wait for a page refresh.

Yahoo couldn't let Gmail hold such a technological lead, so they've introduced their own beta release. It looks much nicer than Gmail, mainly because it looks like a desktop application with icons, subtly shaded screen elements, and lots of features. The ads that pay for these free services are not too intrusive. Gmail reads your email and shows you ads related to the content of your personal email. When I was discussing IVF treatment with one of my marathon friends I got ads keyed to that theme. It seemed just a bit too nosey.

In my view, Yahoo has leap-frogged Google on the email front.

I have been using Firefox as my default browser for a while. I even use it at work even though we're supposed to use IE6. When I heard about the IE7 download, I went for it. It blew me away. It has tabs and they are very well implemented. It has trimmed all the fat. It's quick. It saves images instantly where Mozilla and Firefox take forever. If I could figure out how to import all my Firefox bookmarks I'd switch in an instant.

Scores: IE7 4/5, Firefox 3/5, Yahoo Mail 4/5, Gmail 3/5.

Gotta love competition; gotta love capitalism. Someone should tell the leftist yahoos who run Google that undermining America undermines them.

Mon Aug 28, 2006

Smart Terrorists or Dumb MSM

Hard to tell, these days

Schneier on Security quotes an anecdote that amused me a while ago:

Back in the 1980s, Yosemite National Park was having a serious problem with bears: They would wander into campgrounds and break into the garbage bins. This put both bears and people at risk. So the Park Service started installing armored garbage cans that were tricky to open -- you had to swing a latch, align two bits of handle, that sort of thing. But it turns out it's actually quite tricky to get the design of these cans just right. Make it too complex and people can't get them open to put away their garbage in the first place. Said one park ranger, "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."

Rumsfeld seems to think the terrorists are smart, according to this AP report:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media" to influence Westerners.

"That's the thing that keeps me up at night," he said during a question-and-answer session with about 200 naval aviators and other Navy personnel at this flight training base for Navy and Marine pilots.

Rumsfeld was asked whether the criticism he draws as Pentagon chief and a leading advocate of the war in Iraq is an impediment to performing his job. He said it was not and he knows from history that wars are normally unpopular with many Americans. "I expect that," he said. "I understand that."

"What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he continued, launching an extensive broadside at Islamic extremist groups which he said are trying to undermine Western support for the war on terror.

"They are actively manipulating the media in this country" by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

"They can lie with impunity," he said, while U.S. troops are held to a high standard of conduct.

What should bother him more is how dumb the MSM is. In the recent war in Lebanon the media swallowed photoshopped pictures, staged photographs and Hezbollah propaganda and foisted it on Joe Public. Luckily, the MSM was exposed by the blogosphere, again.

Perhaps Rumsfeld was referring to the alleged massacre at Haditha. Sweetness and Light is a great blog that exposed the short-comings of the massacre story that Time headlined. The MSM was too dumb to realize that their sources had an agenda and played them for fools. The Yosemite bears would not be so dumb.

David Frum has more.

Sun Aug 27, 2006

Beware Islam rampant

It's still Muhammed's religion in the minds of the true believers

I was watching "From Russia With Love" for the umpteenth silly time and the scene was Constantinople. Which led me to Wikipedia's entry on the conquest of the capital of Byzantine Empire and the center of the Greek Orthodox Church. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the fall of Instanbul:

On 29 May 1453 Sultan Mehmet II (1451 – 81), known as “the Conqueror”, entered Constantinople after a 54 – day siege during which his cannon had torn a huge hole in the Walls of Theodosius II. Mehmet’s first task was to rebuild the wrecked city, which would later become known as Istanbul. The Grand Bazaar and Topkapı Palace were erected in the years following the Turkish conquest. Religious foundations were endowed to fund the building of mosques such as the Fatih and their associated schools and baths. The city had to be repopulated by a mixture of force and encouragement. People from all over the empire moved to Istanbul, and Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together in a cosmopolitan society.

This didn't quite jibe with other accounts I'd read. Where were the rivers of blood, the massacres, the slaughter that I'd read about? I checked in with Robert Spencer, writing in Frontpage Magazine and found that Wikipedia had skipped a few points:

On Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the armies of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II entered Constantinople, breaking through the defenses of a vastly outnumbered and indomitably courageous Byzantine force. Historian Steven Runciman notes what happened next: the Muslim soldiers "slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit." (The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 145.)

It has come to be known as Black Tuesday, the Last Day of the World.

Some jihadists "made for the the small but splendid churches by the walls, Saint George by the Charisian Gate, Saint John in Petra, and the lovely church of the monastery of the Holy Saviour in Chora, to strip them of their stores of plate and their vestments and everything else that could be torn from them. In the Chora they left the mosaics and frescoes, but they destroyed the icon of the Mother of God, the Hodigitria, the holiest picture in all Byzantium, painted, so men said, by Saint Luke himself. It had been taken there from its own church beside the Palace at the beginning of the siege, that its beneficient presence might be at hand to inspire the defenders on the walls. It was taken from its setting and hacked into four pieces." (P. 146.)

The jihadists also entered the Hagia Sophia, which for nearly a thousand years had been the grandest church in Christendom. The faithful had gathered within its hallowed walls to pray during the city’s last agony. The Muslims, according to Runciman, halted the celebration of Orthros (morning prayer); the priests, according to legend, took the sacred vessels and disappeared into the cathedral’s eastern wall, through which they shall return to complete the divine service one day. Muslim men then killed the elderly and weak and led the rest off into slavery.

So, when Wikipedia notes that the "The city had to be repopulated by a mixture of force and encouragement. ", it skipped over why such repopulation was necessary.

The atrocities perpetrated by the Muslim conquerors were nothing new to Islam. Back in Muhammed's day they treated their victims much the same, as Andrew Bostom makes clear:

According to Muhammad’s sacralized biography by Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad himself sanctioned the massacre of the Qurayza, a vanquished Jewish tribe. He appointed an "arbiter" who soon rendered this concise verdict: the men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, the spoils to be divided among the Muslims. Muhammad ratified this judgment stating that it was a decree of God pronounced from above the Seven Heavens. Thus some 600 to 900 men from the Qurayza were lead on Muhammad’s order to the Market of Medina. Trenches were dug and the men were beheaded, and their decapitated corpses buried in the trenches while Muhammad watched in attendance. Women and children were sold into slavery, a number of them being distributed as gifts among Muhammad’s companions, and Muhammad chose one of the Qurayza women (Rayhana) for himself. The Qurayza’s property and other possessions (including weapons) were also divided up as additional "booty" among the Muslims, to support further jihad campaigns.

Roll foward to the early 20th century. The Ottoman Empire, in its death throes, committed genocide against Christian Armenians in its territory. The scale of the genocide has been overshadowed by that perpetrated by the Nazis against Jews, and also, faithful Christians who opposed Hitler. But it was one of the worst genocides in modern history, made worse by the fact that the perpetrators were never called to account, and deny it ever occured. Here's Bostom again:

The genocide of the Armenians was a jihad. No rayas took part in it. Despite the disapproval of many Muslim Turks and Arabs, and their refusal to collaborate in the crime, these masssacres were perpetrated solely by Muslims and they alone profited from the booty: the victims' property, houses, and lands granted to the muhajirun, and the allocation to them of women and child slaves. The elimination of male children over the age of twelve was in accordance with the commandments of the jihad and conformed to the age fixed for the payment of the jizya. The four stages of the liquidation- deportation, enslavement, forced conversion, and massacre- reproduced the historic conditions of the jihad carried out in the dar-al-harb from the seventh century on. Chronicles from a variety of sources, by Muslim authors in particular, give detailed descriptions of the organized massacres or deportation of captives, whose sufferings in forced marches behind the armies paralleled the Armenian experience in the twentieth century…"

These days Europeans are discussing the entry of Turkey, under the political system that committed the Armenian genocide, into the EU.

But then, the EU has been pumping money into the various Palestinian entities. Track the Palestinian cause back to WW2 and you find the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini, an enthustic supporter and recruiter for the Nazis. A Nobel Peace Prize winner has carried on the proud tradition of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem:

The PLO and notably Arafat himself do not make a secret of their source of inspiration. The Grand Mufti el-Husseini is venerated as a hero by the PLO. It should be noted, that the PLO's top figure in east Jerusalem today, Faisal Husseini, is the grandson to the Führer's Mufti. Arafat also considers the Grand Mufti a respected educator and leader, and in 1985 declared it an honor to follow in his footsteps. Little wonder. In 1951, a close relative of the Mufti named Rahman Abdul Rauf el-Qudwa el-Husseini matriculated to the University of Cairo. The student decided to conceal his true identity and enlisted as "Yasser Arafat."

When it somes to Islam, the West should learn an important lesson: remember the history of the last 1600 years. It wasn't pretty then and it isn't pretty now. Islam was out to conquer us every one of those years. It hasn't changed.

We will know Islam is civilized when Israel no longer fears for its existence. That day seems a long day coming.

Fri Aug 25, 2006

A must read-speech by Mark Steyn

From his Australian tour

New Sisyphus has the transcipt. Here's a taste:

Let me give a small example of the wrong way of looking at things. It's not life threatening, but if you don't understand the philosophy that underpins it, it can become life threatening. In your nation and in mine, many people have acknowledged, and indeed even boasted, that immigration changes our country. For example, in Australia, and to a lesser extent in Canada, there are a lot of people who wish to replace the monarchy with a republic and there are respectable arguments for and against the monarchy. But the dangerous argument is the lazy line pedalled by too many politicians that in an Australia or a Canada of evolving immigration patterns, an immigrant from Moldova or China or Brazil or Saudi Arabia can't be expected to relate to the Queen, to the existing constitutional system. Now try this line the next time you're in Saudi Arabia: if you immigrate to Saudi Arabia and say 'hey man, I just can't relate to the House of Saud, and what's with this Wahhabism, can't we get a couple of sports bars with wet t-shirt nights every Thursday'? The Saudis would have a grand old laugh about it and then behead you. So when we accept that argument, in essence we're explicitly promoting the principle of reverse assimilation; that immigration imposes not the obligation that the immigrant assimilate to his new land, but that his new land assimilate to him. And thereby lies great peril, not for the Queen, she'll get by, but for a whole bunch of the rest of us. Multiculturalism makes a nation no more than a holding pen, its whole merely the sum of its parts.

Infidel Bloggers Alliance notes that Australian Federal Ministers are quite forthright in defending Australian values:

A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia and her Queen at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his Ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.

Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state, and its laws were made by parliament. ''If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you'', he said on National Television.

Would that Bush and company would be so forthright. All is not well in Australia, however. In the state of Victoria, two Christian pastors are in trouble for critisizing Islam in what looks like a nasty attack on free speech hidden behind the sanctity of political correctness:

A Christian pastor ordered to apologise for vilifying Muslims says he will go to jail before he says sorry for his comments.

Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) deputy president Michael Higgins ordered the evangelical order, Catch the Fire, to apologise over statements made in a speech, comments on a website and in a newsletter.

In a landmark ruling by the tribunal, it found in favour of the Islamic Council of Victoria, which took the action against Catch the Fire and two of its pastors.

The comments made by members of the evangelical movement included that Muslims were liars and demons, they were planning to take over Australia and that Islam was inherently a violent religion.

The case was the first to be heard by VCAT since the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act took effect in Victoria at the start of 2002.

Outside the tribunal, the church leader and unsuccessful senate candidate for the Family First party in last year’s federal election, Danny Nalliah, described his group as martyrs and said he would go to jail before apologising.

“Right from the inception, we have said that this law is a foul law, this law is not a law which brings unity,” Pastor Nalliah said about Victoria’s vilification laws.

“It causes disunity and as far as we are concerned right from the beginning we have stated we will not apologise. We will go to prison for standing for the truth and not sacrifice our freedom and freedom to speak.”

Thu Aug 24, 2006

If the Muslim world can conjure victory out of the pounding of Hezbollah

Just imagine what they would think if Murtha and Company get their wish

If the US withdraws from Iraq under any condition other than the complete defeat of the Islamic nutjobs and Baathist hold-outs then the Muslim world would claim a great victory over the Great Satan. The momentum would shift to the terrorists because they will have demonstrated that terrorism works and that the US has no stomach for a war.

The last thing the enemy would do is settle down and live peacefully with us, as the Vietnamese eventually did. No, they would claim victory in Allah's name and push the fight into every corner of the globe. The enemy has figured that out. That's why they are still terrorizing Iraq. I rather doubt the Democrats understand the impact if the US is seen to lose in Iraq.

Iraq attracts terrorists

Just like rotting flesh attracts blowflies

The jihadists aren't fussy about where they commit mass murder. But one thing really gets their juices flowing: the presence of Infidel forces on Muslim lands. They will go to any lengths to expel the Infidels, including inciting Shiite/Sunni civil war, mass murdering civilians, beheading captured infidels, and destroying any progress towards civilization.

Iraq has sucked them in like blowfies to a dead camel. If the dead camel hadn't been there, where would those blowflies be? Flitting around the civilized world cooking up more 9/11's. Israel annoys them big time. Having the Great Satan sitting in Iraq makes them insane. So they will focus all their resources on expelling the Great Satan from the Muslim heartland. Funny thing is, Sunnis and Shiites both want the Great Satan gone. And they are killing each other to make the Great Satan go away. Who said blowflies were smart?

More Hezbollah propaganda swallowed by the MSM

If Israel scores a direct hit on a vehicle, there isn't any doubt

So pictures of an intact ambulance with rusty damage leaves a ton of doubt.

Wed Aug 23, 2006

Calling Harry Reid

Now you can honestly criticize a black judge's opinion

Way back, Harry Reid compared an opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Thomas with one by Justice Scalia. Eugene Volokh has the goods:

Stephanopoulos: Because you did go on and say that, you know, you talked about his opinions and said they were poorly written, and you talked about one case, the Hillside Dairy case, where you said his read like an eighth-grade dissertation compared to Justice Scalia's dissent, you said, which was like one from a Harvard graduate. We went back and looked at that, and Justice Thomas's dissent was a simple two sentences, pretty clear to me, and Justice Scalia didn't even have a dissent.

The reality is that Justice Thomas is a superlative Justice and a credit to the Supreme Court.

But now we have another black judge, Anna Diggs Taylor, ruling against the Bush Administration on the NSA surveillance program. The opinion has been roundly criticized from the left and the right. The NYT, to its credit, published an opinion piece by blogger Ann Althouse that shredded Judge Taylor's opinion:

If the words of the written opinion reveal that the judge did not follow the discipline of the judicial process, what sense does it make to take the judge’s word about what the law means over the word of the president? If the judge’s own writing does not support a belief that the rule of law has substance and depth, that law is something apart from political will, the significance of saying the president has gone beyond the limits of the law evaporates.

So Harry, you attacked one black judge without any grounds. Now you have a chance to attack a black judge who really did deliver an eighth-grade opinion. Go for it, Harry.

How long will fossil fuels last?

As long as it takes to return the captured carbon back to the atmosphere

The carbon in fossil fuels came out of the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels will put the carbon back in the atmosphere. The concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere today is a bit less than 400 parts per million. Back at the beginning of the Carboniferous period 360 million years ago it was 1500ppm (parts per million) and declined to close to present day levels by the end of that era. CO₂ increased thereafter, peaking at 2500ppm during the Jurassic period 120 million years ago. It has been declining ever since. There has been a slight uptick in the modern era but we are are going to have to burn orders of magnitude more fossil fuel to get CO₂ levels back to where they were. We're talking tens of thousands of years, assuming we can find it.

Funny thing is, though, the planet survived those high CO₂ concentrations without turning into a fireball. In fact, during the Ordovician period 450 million years ago, when CO₂ concentrations were above 4000 ppm, the Earth was a snowball. This link provides heaps of useful information about CO₂ concentations and global temperatures over the long term. The author notes:

The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO₂ concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.

The current low CO₂ concentrations are virtually unprecedented in the history of the planet over the last 500 million years. It is our solemn duty to pump CO₂ back into the atomophere. Plants will thank us and reward us with more O₂, food and biomass for conversion to fuel.

Tue Aug 22, 2006

Leaks aren't new

But that doesn't make them less damaging to national security

Black Faced Sinner has a civil war anecdote about a leak on the Confederate side of the civil war that could have been devastating to their cause:

Back at his hotel, it was Johnston's turn to be alarmed. He found the lobby buzzing with rumors that the Manassas intrenchments [sic] were about to be abandoned. The news had moved swiftly before him, though he had come directly from the conference: with the result that his reluctance to discuss military secrets with civilians, no matter how highly placed, was confirmed. No tactical maneuver was more difficult than a withdrawal from the presence of a superior enemy. Everything depended on secrecy; for to be caught in motion, strung out along the roads, was to invite destruction. Yet here in the lobby of a Richmond hotel, where every pillar might hide a spy, was a flurry of gossip predicting the very movement he was about to undertake.

Sure, the Union generals may have suspected that their enemy might have to retreat but that is far different from knowing when and where. So it is with the NYT leaks about the NSA survellance program and Swift financial transaction program. Sure, the enemy may suspect that such things are being tracked, but that is far different from knowing the details. Civilians, and that includes the Congress, CIA and State Department, let alone the NYT, should never be made privy to military or national security secrets. The simple fact of the matter is that they will reveal all they know to the enemy and take pride in doing so. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that such traitors will face their just deserts. Perhaps, if we lose a city to a nuke we might start dealing with traitors the way they deserve. Hanging is too good for them.

Mon Aug 21, 2006

Hollywood today versus Hollywood in WWII

No comparison

It was refreshing to see some Hollywood stars break with their hard-left colleagues in support of the War on Terror:

Hollywood stars Michael Douglas, Bruce Willis, Ridley Scott and Nicole Kidman have united in the fight against terrorism, after taking out a full-page advertisement in the Los Angeles Times condemning violent extremists.
The foursome's signatures appear today alongside fellow actors and directors Danny DeVito, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Don Johnson, James Woods, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Richard Donner and Sam Raimi, among others.

I know where my movie dollars will be going.

Back in World War II, Hollywood stars made a huge contribution. One of their biggest projects was the campaign to sell war bonds. From About.com:

In September 1942, some eight months after film star Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash while returning from a bond rally in January 1942, a rally in which she had raised some 2.5 million dollars, Hollywood went over the top with a Stars Over America ‘bond blitz.’ 337 stars took part; they often worked 18 hours a day, and were mauled by the crowds of admiring fans which constantly engulfed them. Film stars Greer Garson, Bette Davis and Rita Hayworth suffered varying degrees of physical and nervous exhaustion. Free movie days were often held, the admission being a bond. The Hollywood quota was $775,000,000, but $838,540,000 worth of bonds were sold. In total during the war, Hollywood stars made seven tours through 300 cities and towns. Glamour girl Dorothy Lamour, famous for her sarong, was credited with personally selling over $350,000,000 dollars in bonds. Another glamorous star, Hedy Lamarr, gave kisses to buyers of $25,000 bonds.

In 2006 dollars that $838,540,000 would be worth $10 billion.

Sat Aug 19, 2006

Hezbollah does not understand economics

Handing out wads of counterfeit $100 bills is good propaganda but bad economics

LGF points to a posting that shows Hezbollah handing out wads of $100 bills to those who lost their homes to Israeli bombs. The going rate is $12,000 per home:

Lebanese Hezbollah female volunteers, one wearing a Hezbollah flag on her shoulders, meet to plan assisting residents whose houses were damaged during the Israeli offensive on Lebanon, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 18, 2006. At a school in south Beirut's Bourj el-Barajneh neighborhood, Hezbollah on Friday started handing out crisp one hundred dollar bills to residents who lost their homes in the Israeli bombing campaign - US$12,000 (Euro 9,300) to each claimant. The map in the background purports to show in red the buildings in the southern suburb of Beirut that were demolished and in green the ones that were partially damaged. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

In an earlier post LGF showed a video capture of uncut sheets of $100 bills in the wreckage of an Israeli attack on the Sidon financial district of Beirut.

If that's the sort of money Hezbollah is handing out, then the beneficiaries may soon get a taste of hyperinflation. If it is counterfeit, Israel could score a propaganda coup by challenging the recipients to exchange their $100 bills for Euros.

Fri Aug 18, 2006

How the Left plans to beat Bush

It's a devastating plan

Step 1:

Strip the executive branch of the weapons it needs to detect and prevent terrorist attacks.

Step 2:

Blame Bush for the next terrorist attack on American soil.

The ACLU, the NYT, leakers in the CIA and State Department, activist judges and elected Democrats are doing all they can to neuter the executive branch's war powers. Abu Ghraib, Guantonomo, terrorist rights, domestic spying, illegal wire-tapping, harsh interrogation techniques, torture, alleged massacres, support for Israel - all these and more are harped upon, carped about and blamed on Bush's power grab. The latest, foolish attempt to curb NSA surveillance by a Carter appointed judge is covered by Captain Ed.. The judge's timing is poor. The Brits are still busting up a terror plot that could have destroyed 9 US passenger jets, a plot discovered using many of the methods that the Left is striving to outlaw. Obviously, the threat of another catastrophic terrorist attack weighed not a jot with U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor or her compatriots on the Left.

One can only conclude that all these efforts are designed to make it easier for Terrorists to attack America. Better that than another four years of the Republican boot.

Thu Aug 17, 2006

So, is Iraq a disaster already?

Too many on the Right are becoming as defeatist as the Left

Tigerhawk wonders "Iraq: What should we do now? ". The post was inspired by an NYT piece that led him to write:

By virtually every measure, the insurgency has strengthened since the winter and the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

I read through the comments and found a contrary opinion from Black Faced Skinner who seems to have his finger on the pulse:

A simple rise in IED's might indicate an increase in strength, but not here because it has been accompanied by a simultaneous FALL in other activites, like the prison breaks and guerrilla assaults I mentioned. The Salafists are building road bombs because it is effective and cheap. They're not raiding installations because they can no longer afford to. That indicates a WEAKENING of the Salafist insurgency; they can no longer carry out operations that at one time they did regularly.

Given these points how can one explain the (anonymous, naturally, which I inherently distrust) statement, "“The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels,” said a senior Defense Department official who agreed to discuss the issue only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. “The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.”"

Assuming that that statement wasn't taken out of time or context, that doesn't make any sense does it? After all, Zarqawi and almost all of his cell chiefs (remember all those raids that immediately followed his death?) have been neutralized. And how would Zarqawi's insurgency, which killed more Shi'i than Americans anyway, ever have such public support in a majority Shi'i country? Seems contradictory, doesn't it?

That's because the statement is referring to the Shi'a militias, not 'the insurgency' that everyone thinks of. The Shi'a militias are, again, funded, armed, and possibly trained by the Iranians. Their political leaders regularly travel to Iran for 'consultations.' (i.e. instructions) And they have begun to seriously misbehave by killing political, religious, and occassionally business rivals and picking fights with the British. Though they were laying off the US; after Sadr's two previous beat-downs and the nasty bloody destruction of a few of their Baghdad 'death squad' by US/Iraqi Special Forces, [which was accompanied by a 'hands off' warning to Iran; you might remember that little gem in the 'oh wow, a US diplomat is going to talk to Iranians' episode a few months ago] they didn't seem eager to play with us anymore, it looks like they've gotten their fight back.

The power and assertiveness of Shi'a militias is an Iraqi political problem and they're trying to find a way to deal with them *without* a rebellion. There have been direct assaults against some of the more obnoxious of these groups, but they were not overt or politically challenging. I don't think a peaceful effort'll work myself; they're not the type to compromise.

But anyway, tying Iranian-backed Shi'a militias in with Baathist and Salaafist fighters (who spent a significant amount of time and effort killing Shi'a) is wrong at best, dishonest at worse.

What this uptick in violence represents is not an angry country trying to rid itself of an occupying power... that's silly. If that's what the goverment wanted, all they have to do is say "leave," rather than "please don't go away yet." What this is is the increased aggression of foreign-backed militias. They've gotten themselves into a zealous, earth-cleansing crusading frenzy, helped by the Hezb'Allah drama and Ahmadouchebag's apocalyptic rhetoric, and by god they're going to purify their land with fire and blood. (they really do talk like that you know)

Black Faced Skinner says he is:

I'm a politically minded US Army intelligence professional with a focus on the Middle East, and here is where I'll be posting rants, comments, and whatever else I might feel the need to express online. Enjoy. Or don't. You know, whatever.

Even though he seems to be anonymous (like me), he makes a lot more sense than the NYT. The key point I found:

But anyway, tying Iranian-backed Shi'a militias in with Baathist and Salaafist fighters (who spent a significant amount of time and effort killing Shi'a) is wrong at best, dishonest at worse.

Why is Al Sadr still alive? If we are serious about winning this proxy war against Iran he should be eliminated. Whatever it takes, do it. Targetted assassinations work wonders in the Middle East.

How bad would an anti-war Democratic President be?

Powerline's John H. Hinderaker isn't too concerned. He should be.

Hinderaker writes::

So I don't think it is either surprising or, from a political standpoint, unwise for the Democrats to turn to an antiwar figure like Feingold, or whoever else may emerge between now and the summer of 2008. And, while I would far prefer a Republican administration, or, failing that, a more moderate Democratic one, I think it is easy to overstate the practical consequences for our foreign policy should an antiwar candidate be elected.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not saying that there would be no important foreign policy differences between, say, a Feingold administration and a McCain, Allen or Giuliani administration. There would be. But I think the practical reality is that events in Iraq have constrained what a conservative administration can do, while the overriding need to forestall terrorist attacks constrains what a liberal administration can do. As a result, the gap in practice between the two alternatives would be, I think, much narrower than one might expect from the rhetorical gulf that separates the parties.

I only need to cite one name to show that this reasoning is bogus: Jimmy Carter. Here's an anti-war democrat who did immense damage while in office and as much again out of it. Start with Iran and his pathetic response. Carter stood aside while the fundamentalists took control of Iran, committed acts of war against America and plunged Iran into the darkness of Islamic fascism. The biggest foreign policy problem facing America today is Iran. After he left office, Carter stuck the Clinton administration with a lousy deal with North Korea that they promptly broke. The second biggest foreign policy problem we have today is a nuclear armed North Korea. Carter's third master stroke was to legitimize Chavez's election, ignoring all the evidence that the election had been rigged. With Chavez's election legitimized by a former US President, it became very difficult to take any political action to thwart the rise of a second fanatically anti-American dictator in Latin America. Chavez is america's third biggest foreign policy problem.

How much damage could an anti-war Democratic president do? Just look at Jimmy Carter's record.

Hindraker wrote:

In terms of the broader war against terror, I think the danger posed by a liberal Democrat like Feingold may also be overstated. Once a Democratic President actually takes power, his number one priority will be preventing terrorist attacks on American soil, for the best of all possible reasons: self-interest.

Would a moderate Democrat like Clinton be better? Did it ever dawn on Clinton that the first WTC attack came close to killing 40,000 Americans? He sure didn't act like America needed protection from further such attacks. It was Clinton who let Reno and Gorelick erect the wall between criminal and national security investigations that blinded the US to 9/11. It was Clinton who treated Al Qaeda as a criminal enterprise, despite the near catastrophic attack on the WTC in 1993. It was Clinton who emboldened Bin Ladin by pulling US troops out of Mogadishu. It was Clinton who did nothing when our embassies were destroyed by Al Qaeda attacks in Africa. It was Clinton who worried about whether or not it was legal to capture Bin Ladin and let him escape.

How much damage could a pro-war Democrat do? Just look at Clinton's record.

Hindraker thinks that:

But the reality is that no administration that takes office in 2009, Republican or Democrat, will have any appetite for another ground war in the Middle East. For the foreseeable future, that isn't going to happen, no matter who inhabits the White House.

The reason why an expansion of the war in the Middle East is so problematic is because President Bush has not been able to lead the nation. He's had a few good speeches but he hasn't prepared the nation to fight, and fight hard. No Churchill he.

So, looking forward to a Democratic era, what could we expect? Iran will go nuclear. There is no way any Democrat is going to use military force to preempt that. The US will pull out of Iraq without leaving behind a substantial US military presence to deter Iran. Saudi Arabia and Egypt would probably ramp up their nuclear programs to defend themselves from Iran. The chances of a nuclear war in the Middle East will rise dramatically, along with the risk premium on oil. You get the idea.

We need a President who can lead the nation to a crushing victory over Islamic fascism. What we don't need is a President who will fudge and accommodate the enemy to the point where we could lose that war.

Lebanon mirrors Iraq

In that part of the world, sect trumps sense

In Iraq, Shiite death squads are killing Sunnis and Sunni death squads are killing Shiites. The battleground is Baghdad and the violence exceeds what you'd find on a bad day in South LA. (If the gangs had access to the weaponry and explosives that are readily available in Iraq, South LA might catch up.)

In Lebanon, the Christians and Druze play the part of the Kurds, except they have no safe zone. The Sunnis are part of the modern society in Lebanon, the side that tourists see. The Shiites are a suppressed majority and Hezbollah is the outlet for their political/religious aspirations.

Lebanon is a worst-case glimpse of what Iraq might become if the US withdrew. The most populous and militant sect will take control by fair means or foul once the occupying force retreats. Al Sadr and Hassan Nasrallah? Dopplegangers.

It was a battle, not a war

It's not over by a long shot

The recent action in Lebanon was not a war. It was a battle in a far larger war and it is too soon to know whether or not the battle had any strategic impact on the larger war. The battle was instigated by Iran to divert attention away from its nuclear program. Hizbollah was Iran's first line of defense against Israel. Does that line still exist? Not now. Before the battle Hezbollah controlled all of Southern Lebanon. Now they control very little, and if they discharge their weapons, the cease-fire is off.

Hezbollah is a cancer that has metasticized throughout Lebanon. If Israel is to destroy Hezbollah, it would have to kill Lebanon. It may come to that. But Israel has administered the first round of chemo. Lebanon needs the will to live, the will to beat the cancer. If not, it will die.

Did Israel lose? Jim Brown once said that he always got up slowly after he was tackled. That way, the opposition never knew whether they'd hurt him or not. Should Israel proclaim victory or let Hezbollah think they'd won? Smart coaches would analyse why the game didn't go the way they planned and make adjustments. That's what Israel is doing now. Methinks real bunker busting bombs are on the order list.

Wed Aug 16, 2006

Donald Foster, literary detective, wrong again

He did his best to destroy Patsy Ramsey's good name

Blogger La Shawn Barber had her suspicions about Patsy Ramsey:

Six-year-old JonBenet was murdered in 1996. Some people, including me, suspected that her mother, the late Patsy Ramsey, was involved with the killing. I’ll hold off making a statement until I get more info.

Much of that suspicion was the result of Donald Foster injecting himself into the case.

Some time ago I blogged on the career of Donald Foster, Vasser professor, Shakespeare scholar and literary detective. I wrote:

Foster's worst came out when he involved himself in the JonBenet Ramsey case. He lurked in some of the chatrooms that discussed the case and identified a frequent pseudonymous poster as both JonBenet's 20-year-old half brother, John Andrew Ramsey, and the murderer. So confident was Foster of his identification that he wrote JonBenet's mother Patricia Ramsey, proclaiming her innocence. His suspect turned out to be Sue Bennet, a middle-aged North Carolina housewife fascinated by the case. But that false accusation did not deter Foster from further intrusion into the case. A few months later he contacted the Boulder police and gave them a report identifying Patricia Ramsey as the author of the ransom note found at the crime scene. This site provides more information about Foster's misdeeds and Bennet has her own web page devoted to Foster. Shakespeare studies is one thing; intruding oneself into and screwing up in a murder investigation when lives are at risk is another thing entirely. When challenged, Foster blithely shrugged off his misdeeds as "speculative".

With the news of the arrest of a suspect, one John Karr, it appears that any remaining doubt about Patsy Ramsey being involved in the murder of her own daughter can be wiped away. Unfortunately, she recently passed away before her good name was fully restored.

Tue Aug 15, 2006

Torture one terrorist, save 3000 lives

Be nice, lose 3000 lives

OK, who wants to be nice? The US played softball with Moussaoui and 3000 innocent people were slaughtered.

Karol Sheinin blogging at Michelle Malkin notes a Guardian report that:

much of the information to stop the terrorist attacks out of London was obtained via torture.

Pakistan played hardball with Rashid Rauf, one of the ring-leaders, and a plot as deadly as 9/11 was exposed.

Who was right?

Choice (a) Those who respected Moussaoui's legal, human and civil rights
Choice (b) Those who tortured Rashid Raul

To my mind, (b) is the answer. They enemy respects none of our rights, none of our laws and no international treaties. They don't deserve (a) until they do respect our rights, our laws and international treaties. Until then, choice (a) is suicidal, a recipe for defeat and dhimmitude.

Why GM has huge problems

Its high-volume products are mediocre

Not so long ago I blogged on GM and Ford's mediocre minivans. It's a huge market segment and GM and Ford have failed to deliver an appealing product. Chrysler owns the market. Honda tried to enter the market with an Accord based mini-minvan that went nowhere. They came back with the Odyssey, designed from scratch, and had a hit. Toyota followed a similar path. Ford and GM have stumbled badly. How badly? Check out this review of the Chevrolet Uplander minvan:

The Uplander’s exterior could have been penned twenty-five years ago. The awkward yet infinitely bland exterior displays all the styling finesse and surface excitement of a 1981 Chevy Malibu– with none of the stalwart sedan’s balanced proportions. You can see how GM’s designers tried to transform their plane Jane minivan into a “Crossover Sport Van”: a longer than needed snout, big-ass B-pillars, slightly larger wheels and faux skid plates. It’s an entirely unconvincing effort that somehow manages to capture the worst of both the SUV and minivan genres.
...
Needless to say, the Uplander is as dreadful to drive as it is to inhabit. The loose steering requires constant tending at anything other than a dead stop. The suspension crashes more often than a demolition derby driver. The long wheelbase and epic turning circle make parking lot maneuvering a seemingly endless chore. It leans excessively in corners. But wait! There’s less!

The CSV’s 3.9-liter V6 pushrod powerplant boasts (in the ironic sense of the word) a cast iron block with cast aluminum heads, hooked-up to Ye Olde Four Speed. With constant aural reminders that it would much rather be switched off, the ancient, rough-revving mill delivers a class-leading 240hp @ 6000rpm. But it's not enough to motivate the ponderous beast into a jog. In short, the Uplander’s performance doesn’t even deserve the noun.

Surely the company that builds the Corvette could do better. Its Cadillac brand has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past few years but bread-and-butter Chevrolets trail the market leaders on just about every criteria except rental fleet volume.

GM needs a Carlos Ghosn, the man who turned Nissan around in no time flat. Crappy, boring cars like the Altima became competive with the market leaders in one product cycle. Nissan and Infiniti started pumping out products with flair and consumer appeal and profits followed.

GM hired Chrsler's Bob Lutz to revamp GM's product range. Reviews to date are mixed. With the possible exception of the Cobalt, Chevrolet volume products show no sign of Lutz glitz. That's a big problem for GM.

Mon Aug 14, 2006

It's too early to say who won the Israel/Hezbollah war

History informs us that takes time to determine who won

The good folks at NRO have a symposium on who won the war. The consensus seems to be that Hezbollah came out on top. Jerusalem writer Caroline Glick wrote:

Hezbollah is the big winner of the resolution because it adopts almost every Hezbollah demand. Hezbollah will not be disarmed. An arms embargo will not be instituted against it. Its unsupportable claim to Lebanese sovereignty over the Shebaa Farms on the Golan Heights has received international recognition. It is not going to be forced to release the Israeli soldiers it holds as hostages. As Hassan Nasrallah put it, “Yipee, we won. But we still have more demands so better watch out in Haifa!”

Syria is a winner because the resolution made no mention of the fact that Syria is Hezbollah’s logistical base. By ignoring Syria’s central role in the war, the resolution effectively gave its blessing to continued Syrian aggression against Israel (and U.S. forces in Iraq) through terrorist proxy armies.

Iran is the greatest winner of the Security Council’s ceasefire sweepstakes. Iran, which was the architect of the entire war, did not even receive a mention in the resolution. It is already using this victory to force the Arab world to accept its leadership. The Iranian foreign minister’s visit Sunday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was a clear sign that its stock is sky high. Iran has not had full diplomatic relations with Egypt since 1979.

Others have a different take. Tigerhawk takes a contrary position:

Now, let's talk real estate. Near as I can make out, the IDF is parked in Southern Lebanon. About a month ago, that was Hezbollah's real estate; no IDF. They left in 2000, right? Now they're back. Cease fire or no cease fire, the IDF and its hardware are all over Southern Lebanon.

Northern Israel, however, hasn't a trace of Hezbollah personnel on it, just poorly aimed rocketry. No significant infrastructure damage, no military damage, no strategic damage. If Hezbollah is serious about taking out 8 million Israelis, they've got a ways to go. Nice allies they've got in Syria and Iran too. Nice that they weighed in with all of the firepower they had to offer -- not much, hmmm? Do we even need to catalog the infrastructure losses in Lebanon?

The ever reliable Debkafile reports that Iran was not pleased by the outcome. They conclude:

From the Iranian viewpoint, Israel succeeded in seriously degrading Hizballah’s capabilities. It was also able to throw the Lebanese Shiite militia to the wolves; the West is now in a position to force Nasrallah and his men to quit southern Lebanon and disarm. The West shut its eyes when he flouted the Resolution 1559 order for the disarmament of all Lebanese militias. But that game is over. The Americans will use Resolution 1701 as an effect weapon to squeeze Iran, denied of its second-front deterrence, on its nuclear program.

Tehran hopes to pre-empt the American move by torpedoing the Lebanon ceasefire and preventing the termination of hostilities at all costs.

Let's turn to a historical precedent that shows one cannot always determine the winner the day after hostilities cease.

We all know that the defeat of the Spanish Amada in 1588 was a great victory for the English. Yet, the English did not know that they had won a decisive victory until months after the battle. About 100 large Spanish ships survived the battle and the English did not know where they were and whether they would attack again. Rather than sail back to Spain through the English channel, the Spanish fleet had headed North, hoping to round Scotland and return to Spain via the Irish sea. Unfortunately for the Spanish, their fleet ran into fearsome storms and most were lost. It wasn't until the English began receiving reports of the wreckage of Spanish ships washing up on the coast that they began to understand the true extent of Spanish losses and the magnitude of their victory.

So it is with this month-long war. Actually, in the grand scheme of things, it was a battle. The war that Islamic fascists are waging on the West is far from over. We won't know who won this battle for a long time. We don't even know if its over. What we do know is that Israel is back in force in Southern Lebanon and what's left of Hezbollah's border resources are trapped. If the war flares up again, Israel will be in the box seat. The key factor will be the impact on Iran. The war was started to divert attention from the Mad Mullah's nuke program. On that count Iran may have lost.

Sun Aug 13, 2006

The Brits are coming to their senses

The Observer gets it right

Lucianne is one of the blogosphere's great resources. How else would I find a British newspaper that gets it right"

But even within the bleakest possible analysis of Mr Blair's foreign policy, it is still simply not true that the West is waging war on Islam. Just as it is not true that the CIA was really behind the 11 September attacks or any other arrant conspiratorial nonsense that enjoys widespread credence in the Middle East and beyond. It is also a logical and moral absurdity to imply, as some critics of British policy have done, that mass murder is somehow less atrocious when it is motivated by an elaborate narrative of political grievance.

If young British Muslims are alienated, that is sad and their anger should be addressed. But anyone whose alienation leads them to want to kill indiscriminately has crossed a line into psychopathic criminality. Policy cannot be dictated by the need to placate such people.

British Muslim leaders are entitled, along with everybody else, to raise questions about the conduct and consequences of Mr Blair's foreign policy. But they have a more immediate responsibility to promote the truth: that Britain is not the aggressor in a war against Islam; that no such war exists; that there is no glory in murder dressed as martyrdom and that terrorism is never excused by bogus accounts of historical victimisation.

Would that we would see such an editorial in the New York Times.

How the Religion of Peace inspires confidence

By inhumane depravity

Two sequential entries on Lucianne make my point:Nurse Killed In Hospital Blast was followed by:Baby bottle 'used as bomb'. The ROP bombs maternity wards and disguises bomb ingredients as baby formula.

Nice, huh? So, how are we (that includes Israel) supposed to distinguish combatant from civilian? The scum we face use babies as weapons and targets.

Why are Pakistani immigrants turning to terrorism?

Why not Hindu immigrants?

In the post-war period England accepted large numbers of immigrants from British Commonwealth countries. Hundreds of thousands of British Commonwealth citizens flooded into England from Pakistan, India and the West Indies. This caused a fair amount of racial tension at the time. Enoch Powell made himself infamous railing about the rivers of blood that would flow from unconstrained immigration from the West Indies and anywhere else where people had a darker hue of skin.

Powell was right to talk about rivers of blood. But he missed the source of future catastrophe. The rivers of blood would not flow from the Indian (East or West) immigrants but from the East Indian's ethnic brethren, the Pakistanis. It would be better to distinguish immigrants from the Indian sub-continent by religion rather than country. Some are Muslim and the rest are Hindu, Sikh and Christian.

The Hindus emigrated to a country that prides itself on its roast beef, that serves hamburgers on every second shop corner, that fits luxury cars out with the best dried cow skin (Connelly Leather), and generally cares not a whit about the sacred status of cows in the Hindu religion. Do the Hindus riot and burn and slather at the grossest of affronts to their most sacred beliefs? No. They recognize that they live in a different culture and adapt. At the same time, they make their cultural contribution to England. The hamburger joints alternate with curry houses. But that is to minimize their contribution. The sons and daughters of the curry house owners are doctors, lawyers, real estate developers, landlords, business professionals and public servants.

The Muslims appeared to follow the same path but something has gone wrong. Second and third generation Pakistanis have been returning to the religion of their ancestors and taking it all too literally. In that they have much encouragement from their relatives back in Pakistan who kindly offer training camps in how-to-mass-murder-infidels.

America has experienced an influx of Hindus. They are IT professionals making up for the shortfall of domestic IT pros. Many of them go back to India, taking their experience back to India's booming hi-tech industry. If China is now the Mecca of manufacturing, India is becoming the Mecca of software. Both countries were severely handicapped by their submission to Communism and Socialism, but are emerging from that state with a vigor that should give old Europe the heebie jeebies, but won't.

Pakistan? For British Muslim, it has become the Mecca of terrorism.

Reuters photo fraud from Labanon

Excellent summary link

Click here for a Flash overview.

The indignities that terrorists impose on civilization

Time to recogonize the root cause

Mark Steyn writes:

Excellent investigative work by MI-5 and Scotland Yard foiled this plot, and may foil the next one, and the one after that, and the 10 after that, and the 100 after those. And in the meantime, a thousand incremental inconveniences fall upon the citizen. If you had told an Englishman on Sept. 10, 2001, that within five years all hand luggage would be banned on flights from Britain, he'd have thought you were a kook. If you'd told an Englishwoman that all liquids would be banned except milk for newborn babies that could only be taken on board if the adult accompanying the child drinks from the bottle in front of a security guard, she'd have scoffed and said no one would ever put up with such a ludicrous imposition. But now it's here. What other changes will the Islamists have wrought in another five years?

One answer is body cavity searches. Actually, that should be standard operating procedure since it appears that the vagina bomb has already been used successfully in the downing of two Russian airplanes. Perhaps the screening can be done with dogs. I understand dogs (see comments) can tell if drugs have been hidden inside a woman's body by sniffing the seat she sat on.

At the point where TSA security people randomly select grandmothers and infants for screening by the crotch-sniffing dog, the public are going to say, "Enough". The people who blow up planes are Muslims. Humiliate them.

Maybe only 1 in 100 Muslims has terrorist inclinations, but that 1 can kill hundreds of us with just a few ounces of explosives. Is that discriminating against Muslims? Hell, yes. But, so far, they have not exactly been helpful in exposing the radicals in their midst. Maybe it's because, as Steyn notes:

Seven percent of British Muslims consider their primary identity to be British, 81 percent consider it to be Muslim.

They are compounding their offense by blaming the West for terrorism. The response of British Muslims to the latest plot to blow 10 American passenger jets out of the sky: blame Blair's policies. That's effectively what they claimed in an open letter to the PM:

Prime Minister, As British Muslims we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens.

It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad.

To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy.

The debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.

Attacking civilians is never justified. This message is a global one. We urge the Prime Minister to redouble his efforts to tackle terror and extremism and change our foreign policy to show the world that we value the lives of civilians wherever they live and whatever their religion.

Such a move would make us all safer.

They responded as Muslims, repeating Muslim propaganda, instead of taking responsibility for the cancer in their midst.

Meanwhile, we could give airline travellers a choice: Muslim-free flights with Sept 10th, 2001 screening procedures, or flights that may include Muslims but will require random screening by crotch-sniffing dogs. Welcome to the new World War between civilization and the Muslims who seek to destroy civilization.

Sat Aug 12, 2006

Perhaps the cease-fire will work out OK

Israel won't leave Lebanon until Hezbollah stops fighting and Hezbollah won't stop fighting until Israel leaves

Israel has massed its forces in southern Lebanon to trap Hezbollah fighter in the region between the Litani river and the border. This NY Times report sets the scene:

Israel poured troops into southern Lebanon on Saturday, making its deepest push yet toward the Litani River and suffering its highest daily losses...

This after the cease-fire was announced? Meanwhile:

Earlier Saturday, the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, went on television to charge that “nothing had changed” since the resolution, but conditionally pledged to abide by a cease-fire once it came into effect. “The war did not end, because the aggression is still going on,” he said, but added that his forces would stop fighting “when the Israeli aggression stops” and Israel’s troops leave Lebanon.

Israel will clear Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon before the Lebanese army and international peace-keepers arrive. Hezbollah terrorist will continue firing their rockets rather than lose them. In a real war Catch-22 trumps UN Resolutions everytime.

Remember TWA 800?

That still stands as a probable terrorist attack

The official explanation is that the fuel tank exploded. It probably did, but what was the detonator?

Christopher S. Carson, in Frontpage Magazine, reviewed the evidence for terrorist involvement in this article from December 2004. Some key points:

After Yousef’s team detonated the World Trade Center bomb in February 1993, the “Mozart of Terror,” as author Lance dubbed him, flew to Pakistan to see uncle KSM, another Baluch ethnic who was already planning “Operation Bojinka.” (Bojinka was an insanely ambitious plan to blow up 11 commercial airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean, kill the pope and poison President Clinton in a cloud of chlorine gas. It was foiled in 1995 during the last stages of planning by a chance kitchen fire in a dingy Manila apartment.)

...

In 1995, it was time for a “wet test” of Bojinka. Yousef needed to be sure his bombs would work correctly, so he tested one on an actual airliner filled with people. He planted a tiny Casio-watch-timed bomb with Nitro “gun cotton” chemical on a Philippine Airlines flight to Japan. As Peter Lance reports, Yousef’s bomb, unlike the Semtex bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was really only a trigger that was supposed to ignite the center wing tank of the Boeing, sending the plane down in flames.

Yousef put the Casio trigger too far away from the tank, however. The timer went off, killing a man and blowing a hole in the plane, but the Filipino captain heroically maneuvered to keep the jetliner stable enough to land safely. Watching the news of the crash-landing on CNN in a bar that day, Yousef figured he’d get it right the next time.

...

Yousef got to make a lot of calls from jail, even to his terrorist “uncle” Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), future chief operating officer of al-Qaeda. FBI Special Agent in charge, James Kallstrom, was initially happy about Yousef’s calls because his men would be able to listen in. He brought in Arabic translators for the listening sessions.

The problem was, Yousef chose to talk in the Baluch language to “uncle” KSM and others, as Peter Lance revealed, so Kallstrom came up empty.

...

But, as Peter Lance wrote, “three days after that, the mercurial Yousef told Scarpa that he thought the government want[ed] to sabotage his case.” Yousef told the court that he was going to have Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Garcia killed because he thought that Garcia had smirked at him, and Judge Kevin Duffy wasn’t amused. To make matters worse, Judge Duffy was looking as if he was going to let in the written confession of Abdul Murad, which talked about Yousef’s involvement in Operation Bojinka.

It was time to pull the trigger on America and Yousef, “Rashid the Iraqi,” was going to celebrate Saddam’s Liberation Day with a bang—and hopefully get his mistrial.

As the sun dawned on the Arabian peninsula, it was setting off New York harbor. At 8:31 p.m., more than 270 eyewitnesses saw streaks of light shooting toward TWA Flight 800. After a ghastly series of explosions, 230 innocent Americans careened into the Atlantic in a death plunge.

...

Yousef showed up in court with his standby counsel and asked Judge Duffy for a mistrial, citing the “unfortunate confluence of circumstances” in the downing of the jetliner and its similarity to the Bojinka charges. Judge Duffy, a tough Irishman, was in no mood to do Yousef any favors. He polled the jury, first saying: “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Last night near Moriches Inlet out in Long Island, an airplane blew up. TWA Flight 800. … All we know is that there was an explosion and the airplane went down. It’s a tragedy, there is no two ways about it, but that had nothing to do with this case.” Motion denied.

...

As everyone knows, the official government position to this day is that the center wing tank of the jumbo jet mysteriously self-ignited shortly after takeoff, without any human cause. But in addition to all the hard physical evidence of a terrorist bomb or missile strike recounted in his book, including Yousef’s favorite explosive residues, RDX, PETN and Nitro on multiple seat cushions pulled from the ocean floor, Cashill’s later comment about the attack occurring on Iraq’s Liberation Day is shattering in its impact: “Were Mecca to be bombed on the 4th of July, the disinterested observer would logically conclude that either the USA was responsible or that some provocateur did it to implicate the US.”

As Dr. Laurie Mylroie first established, Ramzi Yousef was Saddam’s man. Yousef, with the assistance of his New York cell, KSM and Osama bin Laden abroad, and indeed Saddam himself, wanted to salvage something from the foiled Bojinka plot. They conceived to destroy a U.S. airliner from New York to get Yousef a mistrial and time to get sprung, acquitted or traded back to Iraq. To celebrate the Great Uncle of terror finance, Saddam Hussein, they set the day for July 17, 1996: Iraq’s 35th Liberation Day.

I suppose that if Yousef's plotting had downed ten aircraft we would know what ignited TWA Flight 800's central fuel tank. Yousef's first test run showed that it wouldn't take much of an explosion to cripple a 747. Those British lads with their little bottles liquid explosives were a deadly threat.

Fri Aug 11, 2006

What an unmitigated disaster for the West

Bush, Rice and Olmert have handed Hezbollah a massive victory

The cease-fire is a going to be a joke.

Why? The Lebanese Government and Army is riddled with Hezbollah operatives who will have even more power and status after brushing off Israel's feeble response. They will be given control of Southern Lebanon under the watchful eye of UNFIL, the organization that oversaw Hezbollah turning Southern Lebanon into an armed camp. The international force will not stand up to Hezbollah, especially since it is going to be led by France, Europe's most anti-semitic nation. So Hezbollah will once again establish a strong presence on the Israeli border.

So this war will have to be fought again under worse conditions. Hezbollah will have the latest Russian and Chinese anti-tank missiles, the best equipment that Iran and Syria can supply, and a new generation of recruits inflamed by Muslim propaganda that has converted Israel's withdrawal into a Hezbollah victory.

It looks like Olmert is not going to survive as Prime minister. The Sharon policy of trading land-for-peace has been an utter disaster for Israel. The Bush administration has sunk to the level of the Clinton administration, relying on words and agreements that are worthless in the face of Muslim treachery. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd hear Condoleezza Rice talking like Madeleine Albright, but that's what it sounded like.

At the NRO Corner Micael Ledeen quotes from and "exceptionally good piece on the inevitability of war" by Robert Tracinski:

Fortunately, George Bush is not Neville Chamberlain. He has already waged two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Imagine if, during the 1930s, the Allied Powers had already joined forces to defeat the fascists in Spain, then invaded Italy and overthrown Mussolini's regime. It would have made the coming conflict easier—but it would not have defanged our most dangerous enemy.

Unfortunately, George Bush is not Winston Churchill. It is as if, having suppressed fascism in Spain and Italy, we were still appeasing Germany and subordinating our interests to a wobbly consensus at the League of Nations. Just as Germany was the central enemy in the European theater of World War II, so Iran is the central enemy in the Middle East today.

Today the West needs a Churchill more than ever before. Is there any such on the US political horizon? Certainly no Democrat in the mold of FDR or Truman stands ready. Few Republicans look the part either, more's the pity.

Thu Aug 10, 2006

Bush is screwing up Israel and the War on IslamicTerrorism

There is no diplomatic way to deal with Hezbollah

David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute writes:

In response to Israel's decision to expand its ground offensive in southern Lebanon, White House press secretary Tony Snow said: 'We want an end to violence and we do not want escalations.'

The current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is a crucial battle in the war between Western civilization and the Islamic totalitarians who want to destroy it. The United States and other Western countries should not only encourage and help Israel to destroy Hezbollah, they should

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